More than nine months after US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan was hailed as an end to the war in the Strip and the first step toward its reconstruction, the framework is only moving forward in “baby steps,” five officials involved in or familiar with the planning told The Times of Israel.

Hamas is still refusing to disarm, which it is meant to start doing before reconstruction begins. In light of that, the US-backed Board of Peace, mediators, and the international community are increasingly focused on a workaround that would secure areas outside the terror group’s control, where aid, the establishment of temporary housing, and, eventually, reconstruction can begin.

But even that workaround is not expected to move quickly, as officials face challenges stemming both from Hamas’s grip on power and Israeli hesitance ahead of its October election, according to two Israeli officials, two Arab diplomats, and a US official.

Hamas’s dissolution of its emergency government this month, in favor of a new US-backed technocratic committee, was seen as a means of creating pressure on Israel, rather than as signaling a real readiness to lay down its arms and relinquish authority, the US and Israeli officials said.

Israel, in the meantime, has yet to approve procedural measures surrounding some parts of the plan — such as the deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops, the vetting of a new Palestinian police force, and humanitarian processes — which officials say are becoming harder to advance as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government seeks to take a more hardline approach during the election campaign.

Still, the plan is moving forward, albeit in “baby steps,” one of the Israeli officials asserted, while admitting that meaningful progress on Hamas’s disarmament, deradicalization, and widespread reconstruction could still be years down the line.

International Stabilization Force ‘creeping toward’ launch

Talks with Hamas in Cairo last week made incremental progress, with consensus reached on almost all 15 points of the Board of Peace’s roadmap for disarmament, a senior Arab diplomat said, while adding that major disagreements remain regarding the exact mechanisms for Hamas laying down its weapons.

In the meantime, the board is invoking Article 17 of Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan, which dictates that if Hamas delays or rejects the framework, certain steps will proceed in “terror-free areas handed over from the IDF” to the International Stabilization Force meant to secure the Strip under the framework.

“Hamas don’t get a veto” on the plan by not agreeing to disarm, the US official said, explaining that the board’s current goal is to draw Palestinian civilians out of the territory controlled by Hamas, where most of them live.

That strategy would begin with a humanitarian pilot zone in the area of the flattened southern city of Rafah, where the fledgling ISF is meant to first deploy along the borders.

The force faces challenges. Originally envisioned to include some 20,000 troops, it is far under that mark, though small delegations from countries such as Morocco, Albania, Kazakhstan, and Kosovo have arrived in Israel in recent weeks, operating out of a base in the southern city of Kiryat Gat.

In another sign of limited progress, the Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat has been rebranded as the International Gaza Support Center, as the ISF track becomes more central, officials said.

Some civilian representatives remain, but the structure is increasingly........

© The Times of Israel